


Paths to Otherwhere

by often_adamanta



Category: Lord of the Rings RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2005-08-03
Updated: 2005-08-02
Packaged: 2017-10-22 07:28:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/235484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/often_adamanta/pseuds/often_adamanta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Originally posted at livejournal <a href="http://often-adamanta.livejournal.com/93902.html">here</a>.</p></blockquote>





	1. Paths to Otherwhere (1/?)

When he opens his eyes, he’s sitting on a threadbare couch. The television is on but he doesn’t know what he’s watching because, predictably, it’s on commercials. His nose itches and when he reaches a hand up to his face, he feels a short beard. This is enough motivation to get up and search the room for a mirror, although when he finds it, he almost wishes he hadn’t.

He’s always wondered what he’d look like with a beard, but never when added to a receding hairline and the beginnings of a double chin. It’s strange to suddenly realize you’re older, and he thinks the image will probably keep him from experimentations in facial hair for a long time to come.

He wanders back over to the couch and notices that the television is either still on commercials or he was watching an infomercial, and what does that say about him? He flips through the channels, but there’s nothing on the ten or so he’s probably stealing from the cable company, not even news, which might explain the infomercial.

He looks around the small room again and spots a newspaper on a beat up table. He picks up everything, especially the ads. It’s amazing what you can learn about technology level from simple Target advertisements.

The date is the same. He reads it just to confirm that it is, indeed, November 8th and then skims the entertainment section. Nothing out of the ordinary, but he’s found important information in weirder places. The current events do hold some fractures. The President’s name is Taylor and there is no news of war.

When he has read every page of the paper, he walks to the window and looks out at the world, finding the outside much like the interior of the room: rundown. From the color pictures that went with the articles, he knows that it is just this area of town.

Another infomercial is on, and he settles down to watch it. He’s learned enough, probably everything he can unless he goes out, and that’s not on the agenda today.

One of the commercials during the infomercial (the concept of which is increasingly disturbing the more he thinks of it), is about hair growth pills, and he runs a hand through unfamiliar, thin hair, wondering if this is what he’ll look like when he’s old.

He blinks and the world fades away.

\-----

“Welcome back.” The phrase and tone were always the same. After the fifth time, it had become annoying, until the eighth time had taught him it was necessary.

Steady green eyes observed, him for a second before Dr. Boyd disconnected the electrodes with deft fingers. “How was it?”

“Piece of cake,” Elijah replied honestly, although that would never do for the official report.

“As we hoped. You’ll be pleased to know that the new interface worked brilliantly. We’ll be back to running the regular cases tomorrow or the next day, at most.”

“Good. I haven’t known what to do with myself.” Elijah smiled cheekily, and Dr. Boyd laughed.

“It’s only been three days. You’d think it was three months, the way you carried on.”

“Was it worth my impatience?”

“Absolutely. We’ll be able to go exponentially farther, although the suits are more interested in the closer verses. I’m not sure whether they’ll think the delay was worth it. No vision,” Dr. Boyd’s voice grew harsh at the mere thought of their governmental overseers and sponsors.

Elijah climbed out of his chair, grinning when Dr. Boyd stopped talking to him as soon as he wasn’t attached to the precious equipment. That man had a one-track mind.

He strolled down the blank hallways of the research complex slowly, not at all looking forward to the giant stack of paperwork he had to complete. He paused at a memoboard and read the few announcements, mostly reminders of technical checks that needed to be completed before the project moved forward.

Someone had posted an article about the facility from a popular science magazine.

 _Even now,_ it read, _brave men and women are working on the edge of the scientific frontier to explore new worlds, or in the jargon of the project, verses. They are charting places society never dreamed existed, looking for disparages, or fractures, between our world and those visited. No one, not even Dr. Boyd, founder of the technology and project, can say what risk these real life heroes are taking to further our knowledge._

Elijah pulled the first triplicate form out of the drawer and started the voice recorder. He didn’t much feel like a hero.

\-----

He didn’t sleep when he went home that night. Restlessness crawled under his skin, the product of too little action. He wanted to smoke or drink, but it wasn’t allowed. He refused to turn on the television.

He paced for an hour before finding himself stuck in front of the bathroom mirror, running his hands over his face and deciding to shave even though he didn’t need it.


	2. Paths to Otherwhere (2/?)

He’s in bed when he opens his eyes this time, and he must have gone home with a chick. The sheets are pale pink, and the curtains are covered in large flowers, neither of which he’d buy for himself. They’re nice sheets, though, soft and still warm from his body.

He stretches luxuriously and his hips hitch against the mattress – and he bolts upright in bed, throwing the covers off and running his hand over the flat expanse of his crotch because his _dick_ is _gone_. His dick is gone, and there are boobs shaking with his panicked breathing. He’s a fucking girl. His dick is gone.

He jumps out of bed and runs to the bathroom, holding an arm across his chest to keep his boobs from bouncing painfully, and fuck, but that hurt.

He’s not sure what he was thinking the mirror would reveal. Hopefully that he was hallucinating, but he’s still dickless in the bathroom. The mirror doesn’t help at all, in fact, reflecting cleavage and long, braided hair and smudged makeup.

“Fuck.” His voice is light and high, sounding more like his sister than himself. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” His fingers grope through springy, black curls for a dick that he already has established is gone. Really. No dick.

“Eliza?” Bare feet pad across the wood floor and give Elijah just enough warning to remove his hand from his crotch. A somewhat familiar face appears in the mirror, a man he’s met in other universes. “I thought you’d sleep for a while. You okay?”

“Of course,” Elijah replies in his feminine voice. He smiles weakly. “Bad dream, that’s all.”

“I’m sorry, babe.” The man wraps strong arms around him, and Elijah lets his head fall back against the man’s chest. Brown eyes meet his in the mirror, gazing at him through matching, graceful curls. “Want me to distract you?” Lips press against his neck.

He should say no. He doesn’t think that the man would be offended. He should say no, but he’s distracted by the hand moving slowly from his waist toward his chest, his _breasts_ , and the goose bumps that follow. He shivers as he feels the man’s erection against him and thinks, what the fuck? It’s not like he’ll ever get this opportunity again, to have sex as a girl.

So he uncrosses his arms, wrapped modestly around his boobs, and gives the beautiful man access, which is how he views it until a large hand brushes across sensitive, no, extremely sensitive nipples, when Elijah’s never particularly enjoyed that before, and then pleasure is making everything hot and syrupy and he doesn’t think of anything except how good those hands feel on his body.

He’s always had a thing for hands.

He turns for a kiss, and is surprised at the gentleness of it all, when the man is tense and wound tight with desire, and Elijah kisses back hard, wanting that control to break. The man’s hands drift to his hips and tighten, and he’s wondering for a moment why his hips are larger than he recalls, but then the man whispers “Eliza” against his lips, and his attention focuses on the pulsing in his groin that isn’t an erection, and, oh yeah, he’s a girl, but that is the last thing that matters right now.

“Please,” he whispers, and the man leads him into the bedroom, kissing and touching the whole way, and they fall together on the bed. Elijah lets his hands run freely over the body next to his, deciding it’s very unfair that he’s dress when Elijah isn’t and quickly remedies that.

“Need you,” he gasps, and cries out when the man’s mouth finds and sucks one of his nipples, waves of heat rolling through him at the touch, at the man’s obvious pleasure in touching.

He isn’t thinking very well at this point, and as the man positions himself over Elijah. Elijah’s trying to relax his muscles because he knows he needs to be stretched, and it’s been months since he’s had sex with anyone, so it’s going to hurt.

But then the man’s inside him, and there’s no pain, none, and he cries out again, mostly in surprise, because how good it feels hasn’t even hit his brain yet, and then it does, and he’s pushing back frantically against each thrust. Some small, unaffected part of his brain is telling him, yeah, girl, vagina, duh, but he can’t really even hear it, he’s so far gone.

Moans are pouring out of his mouth, and he wishes he knew the man’s name so he could shout it, but then the man captures his mouth in a kiss that burned and made up for all the heat the first one held back, and he knows he’s slightly clumsy, but this kind of pleasure, contracting into a tight ball, tangible inside, could never be awkward, and then the ball explodes outward, and he screams and comes, long and hard and with his entire body.

The man comes a few seconds later, surrounded by Elijah’s body, every movement causing echoes of pleasure to race through him, stronger than any aftershocks he’d ever known.

“That was like the first time,” the man comments happily after their breathing has mostly settled and they lie entwined. “Remember?” He asks when Elijah says nothing. “That time on the boat?”

“It was,” Elijah agrees, and he isn’t lying, although he doesn’t remember the boat.

“Love you,” the man sighs.

When Elijah’s sure the man’s asleep, he gets up to search through the apartment to find an explanation for why he’s woken up female. He finds a stack of mail and stares at the name on the envelope.

Orlando.

\-----

“Welcome back,” Dr. Boyd intoned, and the first thing Elijah did was grab his dick through his pants and sigh in relief at the familiar weight in his palm. Dr. Boyd’s eyebrows rose, but he said nothing with the calm of a man who couldn’t be surprised anymore.

“My dick was gone.” Elijah told him, still unable to pull his hand away from his crotch, although he knew he should.

Dr. Boyd frowned. “What?”

“I was a girl. With boobs and everything. And my dick was gone.”

“Analogues can’t be the opposite sex. It’s not possible.”

“Tell that to the vagina I had for four hours.”

“Okay.” Dr. Boyd ran a hand over his face, looking tired. “Write your report. We’ll have a meeting this afternoon.”

\-----

“I told you!” Dr. Blanchett cried, triumphant. “Sex shouldn’t, and doesn’t, factor into the equation.”

“That theory was very sound, despite your dislike of it. It even explained the false resonances.” Dr. Boyd reminded her calmly.

“Excuse me,” Dr. Tyler cut in before Dr. Blanchett could react. “Would someone please tell me what’s going on? I don’t know what we’re discussing.”

“Elijah slept with a guy,” one of the research assistants muttered.

Everyone turned to look at Elijah. He shrugged. “It wasn’t the first time.”

Dr. Tyler smiled at that. “I actually meant what Dr. Boyd was talking about.”

“Of course.” Dr. Boyd ignored everything except Dr. Tyler’s question. “You know about the multiple universe theory.” Dr. Tyler nodded. “During experiments to detect these universes, we stumbled across a way to send the awareness of a person, their mind, essentially, to another universe.

“Not every person can go to every universe, however. For every universe a person can visit, there are many he or she can’t. Our machine can find the ones that match an individual by looking at what might be called, if simplified enormously, energy resonances. Everywhere there is a resonance, that person has an analogue in the other universe.

“This is the first reported case of having an analogue that is the opposite sex. We thought that the sex barrier was too large a gap for the analogue to gap. It also explained the many verses where there seemed to be resonance, but for which there was no analogue. We believed that these were worlds in which the person was the opposite sex. Similar enough to cause a resonance, but not to travel to that verse.

“You can see why this is such a problem,” Dr. Boyd finished with a small smile.

“How many verses have been visited?” Dr. Tyler asked.

“Almost a thousand, some multiple times.”

“And this has never happened before?”

“Never,” Dr. Boyd assured her, although he explained further when an outburst from Dr. Blanchett seemed likely. “But we’ve only ever had male case workers.”

“The theory was flawed,” Dr. Blanchett insisted.

“The theory worked until now,” Dr. Boyd replied.

“Until now,” she scoffed.

“Elijah, are you sure you were a girl?” Dr. Tyler asked.

He blinked at her. “My dick was gone.” Snickers broke out along the table, although Elijah didn’t find it very funny. He was still a bit traumatized by that.

“Yes. But are you sure?”

Elijah wasn’t sure where she was going with this. “My voice was higher. I had breasts and a vagina. My jaw was rounded, and I had girl hips. But I’ve never been a girl before, so you can’t call me an expert.”

“Could it be possible that you started out male?”

“Sexuality reassignment, you mean?” Dr. Boyd asked excitedly.

Dr. Tyler nodded. “Is that possible, Elijah?”

“I don’t know anything about that, so I have no real way to tell. I guess so.”

“He wanted to be a girl,” another assistant whispered.

“I’ll have you know,” Elijah announced, not bother to pinpoint the exact source of the comment, “that I love my dick.”

Dr. Blanchett missed this exchange entirely, focused on Dr. Tyler. “You think this is possible?”

“If the other theory was as dependable as you believed it to be, then I think it’s likely. Elijah’s homosexual and male, the group with the statistically highest rate of transexuality.”

“Can we know for sure?” Dr. Boyd asked.

“Not really.”

“We could send Elijah back and let him research his past in that verse,” Dr. Blanchett offered.

Dr. Boyd shook his head. “That’s not an option. Sorry, Cate.” She stared murderously at him. “I think that’s all. Does anybody have anything else to add?”

“I love my dick,” Elijah added, for good measure. “I think that should be understood.”

“Right. Thank you all,” Dr. Boyd concluded, and everyone left the room.

Dr. Tyler stayed behind, giving him a curious look. “How was sex as a woman, Elijah?”

He considered several kinkier options before putting the question down to a psychologist’s natural curiosity. “Sex is sex, right?”

“Is it? I’ve never tried it as a man.”

“Being a woman… it was a novelty, sure. But I got the feeling it really comes down to who you’re with.”

“That man?”

“Orlando.”

“Yes. You’ve met him before?”

“Not really.”

She didn’t press him for the details.


	3. Paths to Otherwhere (3/?)

Elijah’s walking when he opens his eyes, which is disorienting. The first time he fell flat on his face in the middle of a crowded sidewalk, but Elijah is much too experienced for that now. He slows and surveys his surrounds calmly, clamping down on his excitement when he realizes he’s in a library.

He changes direction and finds the history section in a matter of minutes. Elijah smiles and pulls down several large volumes. Even better than newspapers.

The words flow in the familiar didacticism of textbooks, revealing a past much different from the one he’d been taught.

The Confederate states had won the civil war, so that the land America covered was split into several distinct groups: North, South and everyone else, which appeared to cover far west America and parts of Canada. The Confederation still condoned slavery, although there were laws in place to ensure their ‘humane treatment’. Several minor conflicts had occurred over the years as a result of the Union’s refusal to turn over escaped slaves and to gain dominance in the trade with the European nations.

The intricacies fascinate Elijah, who hadn’t ever seen a fracture this large before, although he should have expected it. This is almost the farthest he’s traveled. He tries to memorize as much as he can in his limited amount of time. He wishes he could take one of the books back with him, but that’s impossible.

He’s so caught up reading about their World War, the only one this universe has had, that he doesn’t know he’s being approached until a hand shakes his shoulder firmly, startling him.

“There you are!” a man exclaims, smiling broadly at him. He gives Elijah a peck on the cheek, easy and comfortable. “The way you forget about me all the time, I just don’t know what to think.” The man, blonde and attractive, pouts at Elijah.

Elijah tilts his head, considering the man. “Who are you again?” he asks jokingly. “I seem to have _forgotten_.”

“I’m Dom, of course,” the man tells him. He sniffs melodramatically. “I might be hurt.”

“You should be used to it by now,” he admonishes Dom, who had implied that much. Dom laughs his agreement. “I just lost track of time,” Elijah explains honestly. It’s been hours since he started reading although it didn’t feel like it. He briefly worries that his accent will give him away, but dismisses the thought. There’s nothing he can do about it now.

“No problem. I know how you are. Now, ignore me for something other than books,” Dom pokes one of the heavy texts, “And it’ll be a different story. Although, I have to admit that I didn’t expect to find you in the history section with _A Complete History of the Americas_.” He raises an eyebrow, questioning.

Elijah shrugs and pushes his glasses up further on his nose, a nervous gesture that he isn’t entirely sure is his.

“Hmm.” Dom seems suspicious, but doesn’t ask. “You still want to go?”

“Sure,” Elijah answers, although he doesn’t know what the man’s talking about. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“Just checking,” the blond says with a smile. “You don’t seem like yourself today.”

Elijah can’t argue with that.

They leave the books on the table and make their way out of the library, Elijah following. “I’m glad you agreed to come,” Dom says after a few blocks. Elijah smiles, wishing the man’s effort wasn’t going to waste. He really was sweet. “And we’re not going to be _too_ late,” he teases.

“I don’t know why you put up with me,” Elijah sighed, playing along.

“Well, you are incredibly handsome,” the man assures him.

Elijah pretends to consider this. “Very true,” he agrees at last, giggling when Dom rolls his eyes.

“Come here!” he orders, smiling, and steers Elijah by the arm into an alley. Dom backs Elijah against a wall and kisses him roughly. Elijah tangles his fingers into the blond hair and kisses back.

Then Dom’s fingers are undoing the buttons on Elijah’s jeans, and his protests are muffled against Dom’s mouth. He kneels down and swallows Elijah before he can react, fingers still tangled in Dom’s hair. Elijah isn’t exactly comfortable with this development and feels a vague moral twinge to stop Dom, but it seems pointless now that it’s happening anyway, and Dom’s tongue is fucking _magic_. Elijah pulls Dom closer instead of pushing him away.

It doesn’t take Elijah long before come. Dom really knows what he’s doing, and it’s been ages since Elijah’s felt anything like this. He does remember to keep quiet because they’re in public, although he can’t hold in everything and ends up sounding a bit like he’s choking.

Dom gives him a final lick, a flicker of tongue that makes Elijah shudder, before standing and kissing Elijah again, his taste on Dom’s tongue. Dom re-buttons Elijah’s pants as they kiss, letting his fingers rest on the soft skin of Elijah’s waist.

When they break apart, Elijah’s breathing is still ragged. “Should I – ” Elijah starts to ask, but he’s interrupted by his stomach rumbling loudly. They both look down in surprise.

Dom laughs and pulls his hands from Elijah’s rucked-up shirt. “I guess I’m not taking very good care of you.”

Elijah smiles. “You’re doing alright.”

Dom intertwines their fingers and kisses the back of Elijah’s hand. He blinks in surprise – and is gone.

\-----

“Did you enjoy your session today?” Dr. Tyler asked.

Elijah yawned. “It was interesting enough. I’m sure you’ve read the report.”

“I have. I was wondering if it was the same man as last time.”

“No, it wasn’t,” Elijah replied shortly. He knew who she meant, but didn’t feel like discussing it. Dr. Tyler had brought him up several times since then.

“Do you know what happens,” Dr. Tyler asked, changing the topic, “to the person you’re inside?”

“The analogue?”

“Yes. Do you know what they experience when you ‘visit’ them?”

“They have no memory of the time we’re there. It’s like they’re unconscious the entire time.” Elijah had no idea why he’d been asked to meet with Dr. Tyler.

“How do we know that? I mean, how can we tell?”

“Dr. Boyd and a few other people working on the project have been visited by their analogues, and that’s what happened, as far as I know. If you want the mechanics of it, you’ll have to ask Dr. Boyd.”

“Do you enjoy your job, Elijah?” She asked, once again turning the conversation around.

“It’s not as excited as it once was,” Elijah admitted. “There’s no adrenaline rush, anymore. But that’s good and bad.” He shrugged, not knowing what she was wanted him to say. “I’m satisfied.”

“Are you?” She pressed, intent and calm and completely in control of the conversation.

Elijah wondered if this was a backhanded way of bringing up that man again, but didn't ask her. He could be wrong. He didn’t think of his sleepless nights alone as he shrugged and agreed, but it was his defensive answer, the one he gave when on missions that’s more than half a lie. He was fairly certain Dr. Tyler knew it.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted at livejournal [here](http://often-adamanta.livejournal.com/93902.html).


End file.
